


when grass was green, and grain was yellow

by okayantigone



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Emotional Manipulation, Kidnapping, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Starvation, allusions to an eating disorder, between S2 & S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 12:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15863760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: “It frightens me that you will starve,” he finally says. The admission rests heavy in the space between them.She considers him for a few more moments.“Is that what your dream was about? Me, starving?” Bedelia doesn’t know about Mischa, but she knows about that long hungry winter. The broad strokes. A time, where he did not have enough to eat.“After a fashion,” he agrees.





	when grass was green, and grain was yellow

In the dream Mischa is alive. In the dream, Mischa is alive and grown-up. She stands as tall as he does, easily. Her small body, once childishly plump is stretched out now, lean and graceful, like a dancer. Her hair, honey-blonde, tumbles in soft sleepy waves over the pale oval of her face, bisected vertically with the scars, faded to pink now. 

In some of her dreams, she covers it with makeup. This isn’t one of them. 

“Hannibal,” she says, voice filled with simple happiness. She says it the way she used to when she was a child, like he personally hung all the stars and sun in the sky for her amusement. 

In the dream, where is sister is alive and grown, he lets the cavity of his chest fill with happiness, a kind of fierce joy that rips through him, when he bares his own teeth in a smile, more real than any he allows himself in the waking world, and he says, equal parts warmth and wonder. “Mischa.” 

He knows he is dreaming. The bright lit gardens of the manor stretch around them, grass yellowed with sun like her hair, and in the window, their mother, still alive, distant and beautiful as a ghost is reading a book. If they call out for her, she will look on them. Her hair is a fine white now, face creased delicately. 

“Hannibal,” his mother says chidingly, in the dreams where it is her company he seeks, instead of Mischa’s, “when will you give me grandchildren.” 

Abigail Hobbs’ blood had left the conversation stained. 

“You visit so often now,” Mischa says sunnily. She is dressed well, black tailored slacks and a silk blouse, a deep lovely rust orange color that matches his pocket square. It’s distinctly, the kind of clothes Margot Verger would wear. Margot is, after all, the only younger sister he knows who has survived into adulthood. 

In the dream where his family is alive, they walk side by side. He had dreamed of them often, in the orphanage. Had woken up, teeth sunken into his pillow to stop his screams so as not to wake the other children. So as not to reveal his weakness. Strange that, the ache has never quite faded. It is a missing limb he has merely learned to live with. Phantom thread he can use to reach back into those year that seem to him now, like a life lived by someone entirely different. 

He directs his mind to the dreamscape when he is troubled. 

“I miss you,” he says earnestly, admits is eagerly to this beautiful, sun-dappled apparition, larger than life, truer than all love-of-his-life, she who did not survive him and his ultimate failure. She had died starving, so he took her starvation into himself, made her hunger her own. 

“That’s not why you’re here,” she reproaches. 

It’s true. He has gone years, sometimes, without dreaming of the old manor, and his family. Without dreaming of her. 

“There is someone,” he begins, slowly. Mischa laughs. It’s a glorious sound. 

“Are you in love, Hannibal?” she asks, wonder tinting her words, her eyes so big and wide and full of the things he wishes he could have shown her. In the dream, she is never hungry. He would not allow it. 

“Yes,” he admits, feeling foolish and bashful at once. “I believe I am, and I don’t know what to do.”

Mischa seems pensieve too, looking back towards the castle. Their mother lifts her eyes up from her book and waves merrily through the window. The ache of the half-life in his dream, full of details his eidetic memory never fails to procure brings him awake with a gasp, Mischa’s last words in the dreamscape echoing “So bring him here.” 

Here, where? Hannibal wonders, but his own consciousness, in the form of Mischa has given him his answer. Bring sweet, darling Will into the confines of his mind. 

Beside him, Bedelia stirs, and her eyes are impossibly large in the darkness of the room, set hollow in her face. Her new vegan diet has cost her some weight, but it isn’t as though he doesn’t make sufficient effort to nourish her. Perhaps some vitamin supplements wouldn’t go amiss. 

“Hannibal?” her voice is rough and raspy. They share a bed, though they are not intimate. The mattress is large enough. Sometimes, he finds that she has migrated into his half of the bed and pressed herself to his side. To her, he is monster and protector both. And if he fails, she won’t survive him either. 

She pushes herself to sit between the down-stuffed comforter, and the fine sheets pool around her waist. It’s warm this time of the year, so she sleeps in a light silk camisole. He’d given her the credit card and instructed her to suit herself. They were both creatures of comfortable habits, after all. Being on the run in no way implied that either one of them ought to give said comforts up. That too, would have felt like a failure. 

“Is everything - ?” she pitches her voice low. It occurs to him, she thinks something in the house has woken him, stirring his predatory instincts. 

He shakes his head. 

“I am fine, Bedelia. I apologize for waking you. I merely had a… dream.” 

In the privacy of his own mind, he calls them nightmares, though there is nothing ugly or terrifying in them. In fact, they are always the same, beautiful and happy memories of a life he never had. They fill him with warmth and joy. It is after he awakens, only to remember where he is, and who he is, and what he is, that it feels like a nightmare. 

Bedelia turns the light on her side of the bed on, the room slowly filling with warm artificial light. She looks less hollow that she does in the dark, but he still doesn’t like the pronounced line in her cheekbones. He does not like that she looks like she starves. He would not allow her to go hungry, even if it means expending the effort to cook each meal twice over – a his and hers. 

Her hand is small and pale, and she reaches for him slowly. He sits still in the wealth of blankets around them and allows the motion, observing curiously what she might do. Her hand settles on his cheek, her thumb moving over his skin carefully. 

“You are crying,” she observes slowly, almost a question, as though she isn’t sure how he will react. 

“Am I?” He reaches to touch his own face, and his fingertips are wet. He allows himself a slow blink, realizing she is right. 

He settles his arm over her wrist carefully. Lightly. He doesn’t want her to think she has angered him. He pulls it away from his face and kisses her cold fingertips. 

“I want you to eat breakfast tomorrow,” he implores. Some fluffy white bread, lightly toasted, olive oil and rosemary, sea salt, lactose-free cream cheese and orange jam with carnation seeds, coffee with almond milk and four spoonfulls of sugar, yes, that will do, rich in calories, and maybe a serving of fresh fruit topped with home-toasted almonds and honey -still attached to the honeycomb – for extra nutrients. He will have to wake up earlier – at least two hours earlier than usual, to procure everything from the farmer’s market, but -   
She is still looking at him thoughtfully, not outright rejecting what he has said, but not yet agreeing either. They both know she can’t substitute on truffles and prosecco indefinitely. 

“It frightens me that you will starve,” he finally says. The admission rests heavy in the space between them. It’s not an unfair thing to say – he does not starve her. Nor does he restrict her in other way. She could walk into any police station she wanted to, and give him up. She will not, but that is beside the point. 

She considers him for a few more moments. 

“Is that what your dream was about? Me, starving?”

She doesn’t know about Mischa, but she knows about that long hungry winter. The broad strokes. A time, where he did not have enough to eat. 

“After a fashion,” he agrees. He has a little leverage on her – he truly hadn’t realized he was crying. Isn’t sure why which unnerves him, but it doesn’t mean he won’t use it to get his way. 

“I won’t starve,” she says, with finality. “You will not allow it.” 

“Does the thought trouble you?” 

She arches an eyebrow at him, coolly. Everything about the situation they have found themselves in troubles her. One day, she will write a wonderful book about the entire experience, and be very, very rich. Or he will kill her. He will do it swiftly, and with mercy, and he will not display her. She will be found in a beautiful hotel room in a beautiful city that suits her. 

She doesn’t grace him with an answer. She turns the light out, and turns her back to him, and by the set of her shoulders, he knows she isn’t sleeping though her breathing is even. 

He lays back down as well, and stares at the ceiling. “Bring him here,” Mischa had said. 

Well, he’d done just that, hadn’t he? And Will had seen what was inside, had peeked into the forests spanning beyond the sunlit grounds of the estates, had seen the truth of him lurking just beyond the treelines, and he had not wanted to stay. 

He deliberates on that, as the sun rises in the window, delicately peeking inquisitive rays through the crack in the heavy blackout curtains. Hannibal knows it’s time to leave bed, and doesn’t feel particularly tired as he slips out to procure the ingredients for Bedelia’s breakfast. 

His own should just be waking up in the basement.

**Author's Note:**

> Wether or not Bedelia is actually any skinnier, or is Hannibal projecting his own fear is up to you.   
> Same with wether or not he is exaggerating the extent to which she isn't eating.


End file.
